CIA operatives testify at Benghazi trial

Witnesses appear under pseudonyms in prosecution of attack’s suspected leader

WASHINGTON — Two CIA officers recounted on Tuesday a deadly militant attack on their secret base in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

Using fake names and disguised in wigs and mustaches, the operatives testified in U.S. District Court in Washington about how they had flown from Tripoli, the Libyan capital, to Benghazi with reinforcements to find Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who had disappeared in an attack on the diplomatic compound on Sept. 11, 2012. He later died from his injuries.

As the officers told the jury their story, Ahmed Abu Khattala, the Libyan accused of helping to orchestrate the attacks on the American Consulate and the CIA base in Benghazi, listened and occasionally took notes. Reporters were prohibited from entering the courtroom, and images of the CIA officers were blacked out on video streamed into a room for journalists.

Khattala, who faces a potential sentence of life in prison if convicted, was captured in June 2014 by military commandos and the FBI. This is the second week of his trial, one that has already offered accounts of militants storming the diplomatic compound in attacks that left the ambassador and Sean Smith, another State Department employee, dead.

One of the CIA operatives, testifying under the pseudonym “Alexander Charles,” said the agency immediately moved to send a rescue force to Benghazi after the attack on the diplomatic mission occurred about 9:40 p.m. The station chief in Tripoli, the country’s top CIA officer, was unable to mobilize Libyan government forces to help, so he told Charles, who spoke Arabic, to hire a charter plane and head to Benghazi. The military also sent a drone to the scene of the attack.

Charles was given $30,000 to hire a plane, and he, four agency security officials and two military commandos boarded a jet to Benghazi shortly after midnight. One of those heading to Benghazi was Glen Doherty, a former Navy SEAL who had joined the CIA as a security contractor and was a highly trained medic.

An hour later, they landed in Benghazi as militia members started to stream into the airport. After a standoff of about three hours, they abandoned their efforts to find the ambassador and left for Benghazi’s CIA base, known as the Annex.

When they arrived at about 5 a.m., they found some of the people there terrified. There was sporadic machine-gun fire from an area nearby called “zombieland.”

Minutes later, Charles said, “all hell broke loose.” Militants began firing mortar rounds at the CIA. Parts of the cement building crumbled. Water pipes began leaking. Charles said he thought he was going to die.

“Roy Edwards,” the second CIA operative who testified, and who also had flown in with the rescue team from Tripoli, said of the mortar fire: “I knew we were taking direct hits and it was bad.”

Mortar fire killed Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both of whom had gone to the roof to stake out fighting positions.

Two others had also been badly wounded on the roof: David Ubben, a State Department security agent, and Mark Geist, another CIA security contractor.

Geist managed to get off the roof on his own, but Ubben had to be taken down. Ubben, whose leg was nearly severed and whose arm was badly wounded, was yelling in pain despite being given a heavy dose of morphine.

“I can never forget that scream,” Charles said.

At dawn, the Americans evacuated the base under the protection of Libyan militia members. Edwards said that if they had stayed at the base, it might have been overrun with everyone killed, he said.

At the airport, Charles said, he learned from two of the militia members that the ambassador’s body was at the hospital. A Libyan commander suggested that the Americans retrieve the body, but Edwards, who was the top CIA security officer in the country, rejected that idea. Instead, the Libyans retrieved the body.

The charter plane took off with the wounded around 7:30 a.m. A Libyan C-130 cargo plane soon arrived to take the other Americans, including the four killed, back to Tripoli.

While waiting for the C-130, Charles said, his wife called.

“I realized how lucky I was to be alive,” he recalled. “She asked me where I was. I said I was in Benghazi.”